It's been a while since this blog has seen some action. I promised myself I would finally finish P+P over last summer however, I started stressing about my dissertation and enjoyed being free for a while. Then I started the final year of my degree and well, it's the hardest year for a reason. I'm happy to announce that I have just graduated with a First with distinction.
In other news, I have received a job offer at a Microsoft game studio as a software engineer intern. I'll be working in the game engine department which I'm very happy about as that was the route I wanted to go. It's strange, all I've ever known is working minimum wage jobs. I was a waitress from 13-18, then a receptionist from 18-27 (and briefly a flight attendant at 22) and I always thought dream jobs were for people in movies or TV shows. I dropped out of college and a career to me was moving up from receptionist to head receptionist and maybe even getting on the management track. Then I decided to go back to school and get a degree. Now I'm actually getting paid to create video games; I still can't fully comprehend it.
I start in a couple of weeks and I'm terrified. Because I never did any programming before starting the course I can't stop thinking about how unprepared I am compared to youngsters these days who have been modding games since since they were kids. When I was kid we had a Windows 95 PC with a staggering 250mb hard drive and, wait for it, 32 whole megabytes of RAM. I remember having boxes of floppy disks filled with midi files from my favourite games. MP3's took too long to download so midi files had to do. Funny story, the first MP3 I ever downloaded was "Eyes on Me" from Final Fantasy 8 and it was 5mb. It took 2 and half hours to download and my mum kept having a go at me because she wanted to use the phone...ah the nineties.
Anyway, I will get Principle and Practice finished as I kind of need to be an excellent C++ programmer now. I also have a lot of projects that I want to start and I have some plans for this blog. My dissertation on the Super Nintendo went well and I ended up creating a program that converts bitmap images to SNES format as well as writing a short introduction on how to program the SNES. That's going to get cleaned up and hopefully this site can help others start their retro game-dev journey. The SNES fascinates me; as does Assembly programming and I'm trying my best to learn x86.
After P&P, I'll be eventually posting full tutorials on how to create 2D and 3D games engines using DirectX 9 and 11 with C++. DX9 may be depreciated now but it still works on Windows 10 and it's a fantastic way to ease yourself into custom engine creation as 11 and 12 are headaches. Then, I'll be rounding it out with some Android tutorials. I've begrudgingly learnt Java (and I hate every second of using it) and hope that some apps will help bring in a little bit of extra money to pay the rent. I may switch to C# and Xamarin though, just because I hate Java that much.
The end goal eventually is to move back to my home town and start up my own games studio using my own engine; but we're talking 10 year goals here. I may even start Let's Playing as indie horror games (especially the terrible ones) are just the best thing.
But anyway, ramble over. This blog has not been forgotten and I've already got a lot of exercises scheduled as I want to get several done so there are no long gaps again. I move in a couple of days but hopefully things should start up properly in August; I may start sooner though. Thanks again and happy programming.
